~ politics for the people

The government are trying to kill off the trade union movement

Some of us don’t need to be told, but anybody who did vote Conservative should be reminded that, unless you own a very lucrative business, it’s the electoral equivalent of self-harming.

Most of the coverage of the government’s new Trade Unions Bill has focused on the opt-in rule as a threat to Labour’s funding. But really this is not about damaging Labour. It is about damaging the basic ability of working and middle class people to campaign for good pay and employment rights.

Because the new opt-in rules will not just affect unions’ ability to fund the Labour party. They will affect their ability to fund any kind of political activity whatsoever. It will hamper any future campaigns for a living wage, or against exploitative contracts and discrimination. Basically any union campaign that can in any way be judged as political will have its funding restricted by this law.

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3 thoughts on “The government are trying to kill off the trade union movement”

It seems only logic to me Mike that the Trade Unions will have no recourse other than to take action before it is too late; otherwise procrastination and lack of motivation on their part will be their downfall and ours too.

This is just the continuation of Maggie’s changes. She brought in the rule that made companies that took union payments from their employees’ salaries, in the “check-off” system, get re-confirmation of the political levy every 3 years. This lost the unions a considerable amount of money due to the apathy of employees filling out the 3-yearly confirmations.

We have to, somehow, beat this apathy and make sure workers do opt in. If a campaign can get enough following it could make the Tories’ attempts backfire beautifully.

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